PS4 Launch Day: What You Need to Know

With the Sony PS4 just days away from its release day we have several of the most important but lesser known factoids that you will need to know for launch day.

Like the changing of the seasons or of a new Call of Duty being released every year, the announcement of the PS4 was one of the most expected and highly anticipated of all consoles before it. Back in February of this year, Sony took to the stage at their very own press conference, and revealed that their foray into the world of next generation gaming would be arriving on store shelves this year. Amongst impressive gaming experiences, fancy new options for connectivity, such as being able to stream our gaming sessions to the web and being able to play titles as we downloaded them, the PS4 was set to feature more back of the box features than you could actually fit onto its cardboard packaging. However, with the launch of the console just days away, it seems that there is still plenty of information we need to know before the console’s release.

The biggest bit of info that needs to be noted is that several of the aforementioned PS4 features will not work on day one at all. Without a patch that is. Weighing in at an actually quite reasonable 300mb of data, the PS4’s day one patch will bring a lot of features to the console that were previously promised by Sony but are not set to be included in the box for the initial roll out of orders. What this patch brings is the following: Vita Remote Play, second screen functionality (the ability to work with smartphones and tablets), gameplay recording, gameplay broadcasting, play as you download, multi-account support, party chat, facial recognition, voice commands, background music player, Blu-Ray and DVD playback and online multiplayer. A hefty list? The PS4 will do what it’s designed to do – play games, making it better on day one than the Xbox One’s day one patch (required for Microsoft’s console to play games at all).

There’s also the PS4’s day one apps. Of course while that fairly small patch will add a lot of the most wanted features to the PS4 and improve upon gaming, there’s still room for gamers keen to use their PS4 for something other than a fantastic next-gen gaming experience to do just that. They can do this by using the console’s entertainment apps. Sony have recently just announced that when the console releases in North America, the following apps will be available: Amazon Instant Video, Crackle, Crunchyroll, EPIX, Hulu Plus, NBA Game Time, Netflix, NHL GameCenter LIVE, Redbox Instant by Verizon, VUDU and YuppTV. So there are still an awful lot of things that the PS4 will be capable of to keep gamers occupied until the next wave of apps are released (if you don’t mind that there’s not a dedicated YouTube app, that is) but we’ll be posting updates on new PS4 features once they’re confirmed.